The present application relates to computer technology, and more specifically, to virtual servers.
Cloud computing facilitates a client to provision a virtual server quickly and easily, without requiring the client to purchase hardware or provide floor space for a physical server. The client may expand or contract the virtual server according to changing preference(s). For example, the client requests a cloud-computing provider to provision the virtual server, which is physically resident at the provider's datacenter.
With events such as revelations on government agencies, such as National Security Agency (NSA) of the U.S., spying on data, documents being released by data administrators, clients are wary of security of data in the virtual server. For example, a client may request that cloud providers physically host their computing services within the country of the client, so as to reduce or avoid the possibility that the cloud computing provider, such as a U.S. company is forced, possibly through subpoena, to turn over confidential or proprietary documents of the non-U.S. client to a U.S. government agency.
To comply with such requests, the cloud computing provider, would have to deploy datacenters in each country it does business in, or in each country that implements a different data protection policy, which would be a costly endeavor. In addition, the client, such as a large corporation, may maintain copies of data at remote datacenters for disaster recovery. The distance at which the remote datacenter is physically located from the local datacenter is limited based on the geographic size of the country of the client, or the country hosting datacenters of the cloud-computing provider. Considering that a client may prefer to literally have the remote datacenter on a different continent for maximum protection, a small country such as Monaco would not be able to place a remote datacenter far enough away to be protected from a regional disaster that could impact both the primary and disaster recovery sites.